Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who has won multiple prizes for previous films like Syndromes And A Century, Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, is preparing Uncle Boonmee: A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which will be handled internationally by The Match Factory.

It is being produced by London-based Illuminations Films.

The film will come as the culmination of Primitive, a multi-platform project by Weerasethakul that will open straight after Berlin at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, on February 20.

Primitive has been commissioned by Haus der Kunst, Munich with FACT Liverpool, and Animate Projects. The installation will travel to Liverpool in September.

The origins of Uncle Boonmee lie in a research trip the filmmaker took to Nabua, a village in north-east Thailand. While there, Weerasethakul met farmers who had lived through periods of intense oppression and violence when the Thai Government tried to suppress the spread of communism.

The installation focuses on the teenagers of Nabua and their relationship with their past. The feature film, meanwhile, is about a man who is dying and whose long-lost son re-appears as a 'monkey ghost'.

The plan is to shoot at the end of the rainy season in October with a view to completing the film in 2010.

'Perhaps no Asian film director has so sensitively -- and so mysteriously -- captured the enchantments of daily living and envisioned the continuing vitality of magical and spiritual presences of daily life, as has Apichatpong Weerasethakul,' commented Illuminations' Keith Griffiths of the company's ongoing relationship with the filmmaker.